The classic 1939 musical The Wizard Of Oz, starring Judy Garland, is the most influential movie of all time, a study has found.
Famous for the munchkins, its early use of colour, and timeless songs such as Over The Rainbow, the movie beat nearest rivals Star Wars and Psycho in a league table of 47,000 films.
Researchers at the University of Turin in Italy calculated an “influence score” for films listed in the internet movie database (IMDb).
Each movie was placed in order according to how often it was referenced by a later film.
The results showed that the top 20 most influential films were all produced before 1980, mostly in the US.
A computer programme was used which treated movies as nodes in a network and measured how connected they were to other influential films.
Lead researcher Dr Livio Bioglio said: “We propose an alternative method to box office takings, which are affected by factors beyond the quality of the film such as advertising and distribution, and reviews, which are ultimately subjective, for analysing the success of a film.
“We have developed an algorithm that uses references between movies as a measure for success, and which can also be used to evaluate the career of directors, actors and actresses, by considering their participation in top-scoring movies.”
Applying the algorithm to actors instead of movies, Samuel L. Jackson, Clint Eastwood and Tom Cruise were ranked the top three.
